


A Conversation in Error

by Setcheti



Series: Conversations [2]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-05
Updated: 2013-12-05
Packaged: 2018-01-03 13:04:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1070776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Setcheti/pseuds/Setcheti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He'd been emotional, in shock. And he'd made a terrible mistake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Conversation in Error

On the third moon of Vulcan – now rather a small, cold planetoid floating in space, as it no longer had any planet to be a moon to – there was very little to do but think.

The small engineering assistant Spock was currently sharing the outpost with spoke a language he did not know, and although he was attempting to gain a working knowledge of it the creature had little interest in conversing with him.  When it was not rushing all around the dilapidated outpost, attempting to repair things, it was pining for its missing commander, Engineer Scott.  At first it had been nearly frantic with worry for him, as two days of subspace silence had left them with no news of either Earth or _Enterprise_ , but then their feed had come back and with it a message from Scott to his assistant communicating that he had arrived on board the ship safely and that the ship’s acting captain was ‘bloody well insane.’

 The little assistant had been happier after that, but still hadn’t been interested in communicating with Spock.  Leaving the old Vulcan with far too much time to sit and think about the grave mistake he had made only days earlier.

His first clue, which he’d missed, had been Jim’s reaction to the mind meld.  Spock’s emotions should not have transferred through the meld, but it had been all too obvious that they had.  Which should not have been possible, as Jim hadn’t been an empath…

Had he?  Spock felt sure he would have remembered…but it had been almost a hundred years since he had last seen his friend, and more years than that since they had last touched minds.  And at the time there had been more immediate concerns to attend to.  Spock had known where the small Starfleet outpost on the moon was located, as well as the best and safest way to reach it, and once Jim had arrived he’d no longer felt the need to remain out in the cold – especially as Jim had been looking a little the worse for wear already, and the small fire Spock had built was not going to be enough to help him.  Jim had needed food and shelter and possibly medical care, all of which could be obtained at the outpost.

Once they had reached the outpost, however, they were met by…no one.  Spock had seen that the empty and rather dilapidated-looking corridor they had entered into through an unsecured door had been worrying to Jim, who had most likely been wondering if the same Romulans who had left Spock behind had attacked the outpost as well.  But then a small being wearing the insignia of Starfleet had bustled up to them, and they were guided into the bowels of the building to where another youngish man had been waiting and who had obviously thought they were someone other than two stranded men looking for help.

Spock had almost done a very human double-take when he’d realized who the new young man was.  What was Montgomery Scott doing in this place? The engineer should have been aboard the USS _Bristol_ , only a few years away from taking over the engine room of the _Enterprise_ ……and he should have been older, _years_ older.  

Spock had covered his shock as well as he could, and berated himself for the sudden surge of relief that had cut through his guilt; it hadn’t been _his_ home planet he had just watched being destroyed, it had been someone else’s.  He had thought the coming of himself and the Romulan had simply caused a ripple of change across the past, but apparently they had both fallen into another mirror universe, not their own time or place at all.  The Spock currently commanding _Enterprise_ was not himself, merely someone he might have been.  Which meant that this Jim Kirk…

The young man – barely more than a boy, compared to Spock – had looked over at him with a quick frown of concern, a hint of the pain left over from the meld lingering in his blue eyes.  But Spock’s Jim hadn’t had blue eyes; his had been changeable hazel, reminiscent of the windblown fields of his native Iowa, a place Spock had visited once out of curiosity.  Again, Spock had covered his shock, pushing past it to do what needed to be done, as he could see it, to save Earth.  And then, once the two young men had been sent on their way to save their version of the _Enterprise_ , he had forced himself to logically analyze everything that had occurred, acknowledging the mistakes he had made since arriving in this mirror universe, the most recent being the most worrisome. Spock knew that his own universe’s Jim Kirk, one of his closest friends, would have understood and even excused his emotional and nearly unthinking need to connect with a familiar mind under the circumstances, and had it indeed been his friend no harm would have come from it.

But this universe’s Jim Kirk was _not_ his Jim Kirk.

What had he done?


End file.
